Assembling for Religious Freedom

I have blogged extensively on the administration's assault on religious freedom with respect to contraception mandate. It's time to get out and protest. The SCTRC and like minded groups will be part of nationwide protests this Friday, titled "Stand Up for Religious Freedom." Here in San Diego we will be protesting on Friday – March 23, 2012, from Noon – 1 pm at the San Diego County Administrative Building on 1600 Pacific Highway. See you there.



H/T Temple of Mut.

Sorry You Took Offense - But We're Tired of Paying for Your Bad Behavior

On Twitter, I got sucked into a debate on the intersection of government mandates and religion which got started because I objected to the hypocrisy of advertisers dropping Rush Limbaugh while continue to sponsor left wing hate speech of Ed Schultz, et al. Somehow the requirement to force insurers to cover contraception, even if their customers, like Catholic institutions, objected, got equated to the use of "In God We Trust" on U.S. coinage which might offend some atheists. (I won't discuss my moral objections to FDR being on the dime.) This is why twitter isn't such a good platform for discussions of this nature.

First, the federal government is granted a monopoly on certain activities. Coining money is one of them. National defense is another. Defending the border would be a third, but don't get me started. The manner in which the government carries out its constitutionally mandated duties is bound to offend someone. Failure to use the traditional phrase, "In God We Trust" would offend far more people than its inclusion. I argue that the health care regulation by the federal government is not required constitutionally, is not wise and certainly did not have to be crafted in a manner more reminiscent of commissars used to producing five year plans.

Second, there is a constitutional test when the government intrudes on the rights contained in the Bill of Rights, called "compelling state interest." The rights enumerated in the first ten amendments to the Constitution are not unfettered. However, when the government intrudes on them, it must demonstrate that a compelling state interest in somehow restricting the right. In the most famous example, the compelling state interest of public safety restricts one's right to yell fire in a crowded movie theater. When one considers contraception, no such compelling state interest exists. Birth control is not terribly expensive in the first place and is a normal and expected expense. Including normal and expected expenses in insurance is a bad practice in the first place. Some of those arguments are repeated here:

1. Insurance that covers known and expected expenses end up causing those services to be delivered at higher cost because of administrative expense and lack of price competition. This is true of contraception.
2. Even though the goal of the bill was to reduce the cost of health care, mandating coverage of routine services drives up the cost.
   
3. The purported goal of providing access to contraception is a smoke screen. Birth control isn't outlawed in the U.S. Poor women who can't afford it, aren't in employer sponsored health plans.
   
4. It's unfair. The elderly, gay and infertile pay higher premiums. "Let's mandate that every time a government official says that the government is going to "help" some category of voter, he or she has to say who they are going to hurt in the same sentence. Because it has to be someone."

As the above list shows, there is no compelling state interest in forcing individuals and institutions to violate their consciences by forcing them to pay for such coverage.

So, sorry, there is no moral equivalence between the mandate and "In God We Trust." Further, we will find that as government intrudes more and more in our personal economic choices, it will intrude more and more on our personal ethical and moral choices. Sandra Fluke's personal behavior, however ridiculous, was of no interest to me until she asked me to subsidize her dementia through my insurance premiums. Further, I'll bet big bucks that she is in favor of single payer, that is government paid, health care and would be in favor of the taxpayers subsidizing her "need" for birth control. Sorry, since I get stuck with the tab, I have the right to ask her not to have sexual relations outside of marriage. I didn't bring it up, she did.

I think this goes to the crux of why the benighted slobs of flyover country are in an uproar. We are tired of paying for the stupidity of other's bad behavior. Alcoholics get paid for life with SSDI. Government employees spike their pensions in the last year of employ. Illegal immigrants use the emergency rooms of our hospitals after dehydrating in the desert. In some cities, addicts are offered free needles. You might argue that there is some cost savings in that list, but we doubt it, because it only encourages the others. Meanwhile the people who work hard and pay their taxes are expected to shoulder the burden of people of whose behavior we disapprove. Given the chance to blow off some steam about the matter, a little bad language might slip out. So we're f***ing sorry if some leftys took offense, but we've been offended for a lot longer.

Birth Control Stupidity

Rush Limbaugh has apologized for name-calling against the female law school student who said she was having so much sex during her college years that she was going broke paying for birth control. (No link love for either.) That she would admit this in Congressional testimony, while under oath, without any apparent embarrassment, says more about our country than anything Rush said subsequently.

Its been quite the brouhaha over the matter, with the Democrats yelling stupid talking points like: it prevents abortions and reproductive rights; and too many Republican uttering the nonsense that the government is paying for birth control. Lost in the shuffle is why the heck can't insurance companies offer a mix of coverage that their customers might actually want. My local grocery store recently added arugula to its vegetable line up; but under the Democrats argument, if Michele Obama urged the Secretary of HHS that this was a great idea, every supermarket would have carry the vegetable. And under the mandate theory of interstate commerce, nothing prevents Washington DC from dictating every single economic choice Americans make.

This is why I turn off the TV every time I hear bloviation on this subject; everyone is missing the point. It's the freedom, stupid.

Update on Contraception Controversy

Widespread news coverage of the Obama administration has ignited widespread controversy. Just perform search for "contraception coverage catholic" and see what's cooking in the news. I have blogged twice on this issue already, because it goes to the heart of questions about freedom under the PPACA. But John Cochrane, a U of Chicago economics professor (thank you Milton Friedman), points out in yesterday's WSJ that the issue is symptomatic of deeper problems with Obamacare. A few examples:

1. Insurance that covers known and expected expenses end up causing those services to be delivered at higher cost because of administrative expense and lack of price competition. This is true of contraception.
2. Even though the goal of the bill was to reduce the cost of health care, mandating coverage of routine services drives up the cost.
   
3. The purported goal of providing access to contraception is a smoke screen. Birth control isn't outlawed in the U.S. Poor women who can't afford it, aren't in employer sponsored health plans.
   
4. It's unfair. The elderly, gay and infertile pay higher premiums. "Let's mandate that every time a government official says that the government is going to "help" some category of voter, he or she has to say who they are going to hurt in the same sentence. Because it has to be someone."
5. If we want to subsidize contraception, then subsidize, but let the Congress vote on it, so the cost is explicit.
6. The PPACA is horribly named and should just be tossed because it just doubles down on all the distortions and cross-subsidies already present in health care.

Nicely put, Professor Cochrane (pictured above).

More on the Democrat War Against Religion - UPDATE

Female Democratic Senators Shaheen, Boxer and Murray signed an op-ed in yesterday's WSJ that gives the rationale for forcing Catholic hospitals to provide contraception coverage to their employees against their consciences of their leaders and members. After babbling for most of the article about the benefits of covering contraception, which is wholly beside the point we get to the key paragraph.

Catholic hospitals and charities are woven into the fabric of our broader society. They serve the public, receive government funds, and get special tax benefits. We have a long history of asking these institutions to play by the same rules as all our other public institutions.

There you have it in black and white from Democrat politicians, the underlying fascist mentality of their war on religion. If you want to participate in the "fabric of our broader society" you have to check your principles and knuckle under to the state's version of morality. Any effort by a group to ameliorate the difficulties of the less fortunate is subject to the imposition of government standards of religion. The authors have the gall to call this outcome freedom of religion in the article.

I have seen nothing more revealing of the lack of understanding of what freedom of conscious or indeed freedom of any type means to progressives than that quote. Read it carefully if you value your freedom.

UPDATE

I removed some inflammatory language from the post. You can read Calivancouver's comment to see why.

More Loss of Liberty and Freedom of Conscience

Of course it did. The Obama administration is not going to allow Catholic organizations freedom of choice in whether or not to fund insurance coverage of contraception. From the NYTimes.

Federal officials said they would give such church-affiliated organizations one additional year — until Aug. 1, 2013 — to comply with the requirement. Most other employers and insurers must comply by this Aug. 1.
. . .
“In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” said Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
. . .
The rule includes an exemption for certain “religious employers,” including houses of worship. But church groups said the exemption was so narrow that it was almost meaningless. A religious employer cannot qualify for the exemption if it employs or serves large numbers of people of a different faith, as many Catholic hospitals, universities and social service agencies do.

Even beyond religious conscience, this limits everyone's choice. What if I want a plan that costs a lot less? Cutting back on mandated services like contraception that have no co-pay could reduce the cost of insurance. Why isn't that a consumer choice? The assault on freedom from the health care law is so vast, that it sometimes helps to just think about one assault at a time.

Those who argue otherwise just hate me as an individual and hate the whole concept of consumer choice. They are called leftists or statists and they have decided to regulate everyone's lives, individual choice and conscience be damned.